Establishing positively that race records in Brazil lead up to socialinequalities that might permit a definition of two basic populationgroups – whites and non-whites –, some racial studies adopt the concept(non-biological) of race as a general sociological and political ca tegory.The race category, although essential for the studies of race inequalities,when transformed in a general instrument of analysis and normativedesideratum, leads to an incomplete comprehension of the Braziliannational formation, to an ob jectivist vision of the race relations and to areduction of the social identities to its political-instrumentaldimension.